The limo picked me up Saturday, April 29 promptly at 8:15am as arranged to get me to LAX in plenty of time for an 11:20am departure time. With normal Saturday morning traffic, that meant I would arrive at 9am or a little before. I probably didn't need to be there quite that early, but with LAX you never know how long it will take you to check luggage and make it through security, and I didn't want to start my trip all stressed out, looking at my watch, and praying that I'd make it to the gate in time to make the flight.
When I arrived at the Qantas counter, I knew immediately that something was very wrong. The counter was deserted. No passengers trying to checkin, no employees manning the counter, lights off. What the hell? I fumbled into my carry-on to find my itinerary. Was I here on the wrong day? What was going on? The itinerary cleared things up immediately: MORON!!! The departure time was 11:20 *PM*, not 11:20 *AM*. First time I've ever pulled THAT particular stunt. Thank heavens for cell phones. I immediately called the limo driver and managed to get ahold of him before he had made it out of the greater LAX area. He looped back around, picked me up, and took me back home so I didn't have to kill 12 hours in LAX. (Side note: even if I HAD been stuck in LAX for 12 hours, that wouldn't have even been CLOSE to the longest layover of the trip. But more on that later....) The limo drive sure was a good sport. I tried to pay him for the ride home, but he wouldn't accept it.
So I got to hang out at home, watch the NBA playoffs, and generally putter around for several hours. The limo returned at 8:15pm and got me to LAX in plenty of time. This time the Qantas counter was bustling with activity. The helpful Qantas employee made sure I got in the correct line and all was well.
... until I actually got up to the counter: "Do you have an Australian visa?"
"No, my travel agent said it could be taken care of here when I checkin."
"Yes, we can take care of that here. But usually the travel agent takes care of that."
Regardless, the Qantas agent started typing away at what I can only assume is the next edition of the Great American Novel. Or perhaps the Great Australian Novel. But I don't think the Qantas agent was Australian, so we'll stick with Great American Novel for now. Just what DO these people have to type? I swear, he did more typing than I am as I write this tome.
They got me all taken care of: my luggage weighed in at a little over 29 kilos (I'm really learning how to travel light on these trips!) I ran my luggage through the inspection center, worked my way through the immigration line, then through the security line, and voila! I was at my gate nearly an hour before departure time. Fantastic!
Precisely on schedule, we boarded the plane and we were off. I have to say, Qantas is a very good airline. They really treated us "stearage" passengers great. The food was edible (ESPECIALLY for airline food.) The were attentive. They came by frequently to offer us beverages and snacks and to pick up our trash. This was the best I've ever been treated in economy class. Each seat had its own TV screen, and they had "movies on demand". Well, not quite "on demand", but close enough. I watched a movie, listened to my MP3 player for awhile, ate dinner, and then settled down for a good night's sleep. My doctor had given me some prescription sleeping pills, and I'm definitely sold on that little trick. After dinner I popped an Ambien dozed off. I awoke 8 hours later to the smell of coffee and a hot breakfast. This was by FAR the easiest 14 hour flight I've ever had.
My next adventure was getting through Australian Customs & Immigration. I presented all my properly filled out forms, the agent swiped my passport, stared at the screen for a moment, and then pressed the call button for his supervisor. Bummer! It turned out the Qantas agent had screwed up entering my information for the electronic visa, so the information on my passport did not match the visa information in the computer. This meant that for the rest of the trip, whenever I passed through Australian immigration, I had to get pulled aside for "personal treatment". Fortunately, Australian immigration agents are CONSIDERABLY more polite, professional, and friendly than their American counterparts. In America I probably would have warranted the "courtesy cavity search." As it was, other than being a teeny bit nerve-wracking the first time and wasting a little time, it turned out to not be all that big a deal.
My flight from Brisbane to Honiara, Guadalcanal wasn't until the next morning. So my travel agent had arranged for a room at a nearby Best Western hotel. Hah! Apparently his definition of "nearby" and mine differ wildly. It was about a 30-40 minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. I was convinced that the taxi driver was "long hauling" me, so I asked at the desk how much the cab fare should have been. I was relieved (at least in one sense) to learn that my cabby had not ripped me off. Of course, it DID make me wonder about my travel agent. At least I got a good "motor tour" of Brisbane. I finally got to the hotel around 9am. Fortunately, my room was ready and I was able to checkin immediately. I killed the rest of the day uneventfully. Didn't do all that much, but I wasn't there to tour Brisbane. Early the next morning a shuttle bus picked me up and took me back to the airport.
... where my electronic visa information STILL didn't match my passport, so I once again was given the "personal treatment". I sat over on the "Group W Bench" (for you Arlo Guthrie fans) as a couple of Australian immigrations officials talked and pointed at me. After a relatively few minutes, an official disappeared into another room, emerging a little while later to tell me that everything was OK and I could be on my merry way.
It was a three-hour flight to Honiara, and it passed uneventfully. The plane wasn't completely full, so I had an empty seat next to me. I killed the time listening to my MP3 player, dozing intermittently.
At Honiara I somehow managed to be the VERY LAST PERSON from my flight to clear immigration. I felt like Alan Funt must have had a hidden camera around there someplace. It didn't matter what line I was standing in, it stopped moving as soon as I got in it. Did I mention that Honiara airport is *not* air-conditioned? It definitely prepared me for the "full island experience."
Once I had cleared immigration, retrieved my luggage, and cleared customs, I quickly was able to find the representative of Bilikiki cruises, the operators of the liveaboard dive boat which would be my home for the next nine nights. Another passenger had been on my flight and was already there talking with Evan (the Bilikiki rep.) The other passenger was Max, a 79-year-old South African. You would NEVER have guessed Max was 79 years old. He looked maybe 60 to me. He takes breathtaking underwater videos and makes them into DVDs. He doesn't sell them. He just does it as a hobby. I do hope I can manage to beg him to send me a copy of our trip once he's finished editing it into a DVD.
We stood there chatting for a little while, and I finally asked if we were waiting for other passengers. Yes, there were supposed to be a couple of Russians joining us. I asked if they were on my flight. When told that they were, I informed Evan that I was the VERY last passenger from my flight to pass through immigration. Evan then went back into the terminal to search for them. He finally asked the immigration officials if they had ever cleared immigration. They hadn't. We never did find them. Later on in the trip we heard rumor that they were denied boarding on their flight from Turkey to Brisbane. There was probably an interesting story there, but we were never privy to it.
Evan took us to a hotel where we could hang around the pool / bar area while we waited for the Spirit of the Solomons to be ready for us to board. At the hotel I met John, another guest on the boat. John informed me that Jeff & Jim (other two Daring Divers From Hell) were aleady there, and that they were "over at the internet cafe". I had no idea where this internet cafe might be, but I was keen to explore a strange new city, so I set off to see if I might be able to find Jeff & Jim.
Now let me tell you, I don't like to dis a new city, but Honiara is THE biggest shithole I have ever encountered. I don't claim to be the most experienced world traveller, but I've been to a lot of poor third-world countries and wandered around some pretty poor, dirty cities. But Honiara takes the cake. Grimy, smelly, crowded, loud. Litter (and betel nut spit) everywhere. And this is their capital city! I shudder to think what the "lesser" places must be like. I didn't even make it to the places that had been burned down the week before during the riots. Yeah, you read that right: the people were rioting in the streets the week before I arrived. They burned down a big new casino and burned down nearly all of Chinatown. We had driven by the burned out shells on our way from the airport to the hotel. Here's the best description of Honiara I can muster: If you've ever been to Belize City, Honiara makes Belize City look like Paris. Although I do have to admit one thing: there were a lot more panhandlers asking me for money in Belize City. I didn't get the bum put on me much in Honiara.
As I wandered about, soaking in all the "charm" that is downtown Honiara, I actually managed to run into Jeff & Jim on the sidewalk. What a miracle! Halfway around the world, and we managed to run into each other on the sidewalk. We all wandered back to the hotel where sat around the bar, having a cool drink and trading "lusty tales of adventure". After an hour or two, the Bilikiki rep came back and told us the boat was ready. We were finally off on our dive adventure!
The only other thing that went wrong was with the nitrox mixture. For the non-divers, nitrox is a mixture of air that is higher in oxygen than regular air. It increases the total length of time we can remain underwater because the higher oxygen content (and thus lower nitrogen content) means we absorb less nitrogen during a dive. Anyways, the lever, or knob, or whatever, that controls the amount of oxygen in the nitrox mixture became stuck during the trip. The crew was reluctant to try and force it, fearing that it might break and we wouldn't have any nitrox the rest of the trip. So the mixtures kept getting richer and richer in oxygen, to the point where we were bumping up against the total limit of oxygen exposure the human body can take in one day. By the end of the trip we were having the crew do weird things like fill the tanks with nitrox up to a certain point, then switch hoses to fill them the rest of the way with regular air. Regardless, other than that relatively minor inconvenience, the crew treated us like royalty and ran a really good dive deck.
Speaking of the crew treating us like royalty.... The Spirit of the Solomons normally accepts a full complement of 20 passengers. This trip there were only seven passengers signed up. When the Russians failed to show, that meant there were only five passengers aboard! There was a boat crew of 11, plus the two divemasters, so the passengers were outnumbered by the crew 13-5. As one might expect, yes we were spoiled rotten!
The motto on liveaboard dive ships is simple: "Eat, sleep, dive!" And that's pretty much exactly what we did. Dives were scheduled for 8am, 11am, 2pm, and 5pm. Some nights we did night dives at 8pm. Other nights we did a "dusk dive" at 5:30 and skipped the night dive. Since we normally spent an hour or more underwater on each dive, by the time we got out, dried off, had something to drink and maybe a snack, it was about time to dive again. I was TIRED by 10pm every night, and had no trouble falling asleep. A couple days I was so tired that I would skip a dive. I needed the nap more than I needed another dive!
Our divemasters on this trip were Sam & Kelly. Sam was British while Kelly was Australian. They were divemasters extraordinaire! They've been all over the world acting as divemasters at various resorts. We learned that this trip was their first as masters of the boat. They had done one trip out with the previous boat managers and we were their first "solo". Kind of a yin-and-yang situation for them: it was a little easier than usual because there were only five passengers. But three of those five were the Daring Divers From Hell! And we Daring Divers definitely know how to break in (and break down) divemasters. Actually, we were on pretty good behavior this trip. But that's mostly because Sam & Kelly didn't have very many rules, so it was pretty much impossible for us to get in any trouble. It was more like they were just really experienced fellow divers who knew the dive sites. They really never tried to act like they were the boss of us. They acted more like fellow passengers who were just really helpful. Sam & Kelly were really great hosts, and I think they have a great future ahead of them as managers / divemasters of the Spirit of the Solomons.
The dive sites were all incredibly lush, with very healthy reefs. I've never seen so much sea life! At times we were literally completely surrounded by schools of fish. Photographs can't really show the intense amount of life. Visibility was somewhat less than I expected: most dives I would say it ranged around the 45-60 foot range. Towards the end of the trip we did have a few dives where visibility crept up more towards the 100 foot mark. But for the most part the incredible amount of nutrients in the water reduced the visibility. Of course, the nutrients are part of what made for the vast amount and diversity of life we encountered.
Just about all the sites we dove were pretty incredible, but here are a few that stick out in my mind:
Twin Tunnels in the Florida Islands: The dive site is the top of an extinct volcano. The "twin tunnels" are old lava tubes. The divemasters led us down one of the lava tubes, but when I hit 105 feet I wussed out and went back up. With my nitrox mixture my max depth was supposed to be 102 feet. I saw my first cuddlefish of the trip and managed to get some movies as well as still pictures. We also saw some lionfish.
Leru Cut in the Russell Islands: The cut is a narrow inlet into the island. We swam up the cut at about 20 feet, then surfaced in the middle of a dense jungle. INTENSE! There were vines hanging everywhere, and you could could practically hear Tarzan yells. Later in the dive I saw my first bumpheaded parrotfish. These things were huge, maybe 3-4 feet in length. They are so named because they have a huge head which looks sorta like a sperm whale, and their mouth looks like a parrot's beak.
Barracuda Point on Mary Island: This was probably the most fish life I've ever seen. School upon school of fish. I got a movie of two HUGE schools of barracuda merging together, then separating. Sorta like those computer simulations that show two galaxies colliding.
Malemale Island at Morovo Lagoon: Pronounced MAHL-ay-MAHL-ay. Get your mind out of the gutter! I dubbed this dive "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride." The current was the strongest I've ever experienced. A devil-ray swam right by me as I was hanging onto a rock for dear life. I managed to get a movie of the devil-ray. Jim got a great picture of me taking the movie. The bubbles from me exhaling are going away from me horizontally because the current was so strong!
Mbolu Canyons: This was by far the most lush coral gardens I have ever seen. Absolutely stunning. This is the site where we saw the giant clams, some of which were more than six feet across. The colors were incredible. I've never seen anything like it in the caribbean.
Karunjon: We saw a little of everything on this dive, but the most memorable thing was the tiniest: Divemaster Sam found pygmy seahorses. I thought the guys were just teasing me when they told me about pgmy seahorses: they are TINY seahorses that are less than the length of your little fingernail in length. Definitely less than a quarter inch. They live on pink seafans, and they are the same color as the seafan. Sam used "the Findinator" (a cheap magnifying lense!) to find them. When he first pointed one out to me I thought it was just a broken twig from the seafan. I managed to get a nearly perfect, in-focus picture of a pregnant pygmy seahorse. Probably the best picture (and luckiest!) I got the entire trip.
Japanese Maru #2: A sunken WW II Japanese freighter. Normally I'm not much of one for wreck dives, but this was different. It had been down there long enough that it was completely encrusted and was teaming with life. Some of the soft corals were so big it was like swimming through a forest. And on my safety stop I found the tinest little crab I've ever seen. I was lucky enough to get a picture with my finger in it for scale: the crab was about the size of my fingernail.
Batcave: Aptly named. This was another "swim-in" dive. We swam into a cut at about 20 feet, then surfaced in the cave. Bats everywhere! Really an eerie looking place.
Mirror Pond: Another dive where the highlight was at the surface. It was another beautiful, intense jungle scene. The site also had some incredibly lush coral gardens, and some very nice swim-thrus.
In addition to the diving, we also visited some native villages on the islands. A couple of the villages had "carving shows", where they were selling hand-carved figurines, bowls, and statues. The artwork was beautiful. Some of it was truly world-class. But to be honest, I had as much fun "people-watching" as I did checking out the carvings.
The last day we visited another village and they did some traditional dancing and singing. I thought the singing in particular was one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced. The harmonies were wonderful. I managed to get about 3 minutes of movies of the dancing and singing before I filled up the memory card in my camera.
This was a particularly attractive village. When the villagers greated us, they had schoolgirls present us with leis. The leis has a beautiful aroma, and I ended up hanging it in my cabin, filling the room with fragrance. The chief took us on a tour and we got the see the village "up-close and personal." This was really a great side-trip, and one of the highlights of the entire trip for me.
After lunch we went out wandering about Honiara. Jeff & Jim wanted to check email, so we paid a visit to the internet cafe again. Then Jim & I wanted to visit a casino we had seen on the way from the boat to the hotel. On the way to the casino Jim found a gift shop where he picked up a beautiful, hand-carved crocodile. The price listed on it was $360 Solomon dollars (about $55 US). With the help of Jeff's stellar negotiation skills Jim was able to get the price down to $275 Solomon, and even got them to accept US money to pay for it! Good score.
The casino was SCARY. They had a bouncer outside the door, and this guy wore a scowl like a badge of courage. The casino wanted a $10 Solomon "cover charge" just to enter the casino, and the place looked sufficiently like a dump that I wimped out and didn't even go in. Jim was un-deterred: he wandered in to buy some chips, failing to bother with the cover charge. Apparently everybody in the casino turned and stared at Jim when he walked in. He picked up the chips and got out of there quickly. Jeff & I were (nervously) waiting for him on the street, and were pretty happy to just get out of there.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was around 5:30pm. We spent a couple more hours listening to my "disposable stereo" (CD / MP3 player: $12.95. Travel speakers: $25. Having tunes to listen to whilst killing a day in Honiara: priceless!) Around 8:30 we went to dinner. After that we all cleaned up, packed up, and got ready to leave for the airport.
At the airport, the mishaps began. I was the first to checkin, and my luggage was checked to Brisbane. But they checked Jeff & Jim's luggage all the way to LAX. Why was I singled out for punishment? When I asked, the counter clerk agreed to re-check my luggage all the way to LAX. But by then the luggage had already disappeared on the conveyer belt, so she had to ask one of the luggage handlers to try and fetch my luggage so she could re-tag it. I was dubious. Good thing I was skeptical....
The flight departed on time (if I may use that term for a 2am flight!) and was uneventful. Three hours later we were in Brisbane. I had no confidence that my luggage had been properly re-checked, so after I cleared immigration (visa still screwed up, but apparently at 4am they just don't seem to care as much...) I went and checked the luggage carousel. Good thing I did: ONE of my pieces of luggage had been pulled out and was circling around the carousel. The other was nowhere to be found. I went to the luggage service center, where they said they knew where my other piece was. They took the piece that had been on the carousel off my hands and said they would make sure it got checked back in.
Now we had a seven hour layover until our flight to LAX departed at 11am. Did I mention that I wanted to kill my travel agent? John, one of the other passengers on the Spirit of the Solomons, was also flying to LAX. He was already home by the time we got to Brisbane. He didn't have to wait 18 hours in Honiara. He didn't have to wait seven hours in Brisbane. While it took us 42 hours to get from the boat to LAX, it took him less than 24 hours.
Anyway, we now were faced with having seven more hours to kill. Our first brilliant idea was to find a cheap motel and get some power-napping in. We grabbed a cab and he took us around to various hotels and motels. They were all either full, or they were completely closed and locked with nobody manning the checkin counter. After trying a half-dozen (or more) places, we had to give up and go back to the airport. We ended up grabbing some two-seat pseudo-sofas and napping on those. I actually did manage to fall asleep, waking up a couple hours later to a noisy, bustling airport.
We grabbed a little something to eat, I found a two-day-old copy of the New York Times, and we managed to kill the remaining time 'til our flight departed. Once again I used the sleeping-pill trick successfully, and 14 hours later we were at LAX.
...Where I had one final indignity to suffer: the limo got a flat tire and we had to wait an hour for the tow-truck dude to show up and change it. Of course the spare tire was one of those "silly-spares" instead of a full tire, so we weren't supposed to go over 45 MPH on it. No problem, said the tow-truck operator: since it was now 8am we would be going through rush-hour in Los Angeles. No way we'd get over 45 MPH. Finally, around 10am I arrived home.
It was another great DDFH trip. Great diving, great times. And we were never at each other's throats the entire trip! Pretty good for us. Time now to start planning the next trip: this was the second earliest we've ever managed to have the "January scuba trip." We once had the "January trip" in August. Maybe if we start planning now, we'll actually manage to schedule the trip for February or March.